Steve Klepetar - Dead Season / Alone and Unafraid

Dead Season

something

broken on the hay-

strewn floor

tiny skull, fragment

of rock

or bone, a little

gearbox caught

in dusty

sunlight streaming

through the barn

objects scattered

by entropy

as the world’s great

hammer

thuds in the smithy

of time, and 

ears grow

used to the clang

of steel

on cooling steel

and syllables

blur  into words

molecules slow

and congeal into this cold

this dead

season stilled

of panic, frozen into calm

Alone and Unafraid

She’s out again in the bright cold, brushing

a layer of light snow from the drive, hands

numbing even in her alpaca gloves. Her

breath steams, hair crinkles with electric

sparks. Winter marks her skin with its dry touch.

Inside she mends the fire, stirring ashes

into glowing sparks. The days are longer now

but all this vapid sun can do is make snow

sparkle on the boughs of oaks and burn her eyes.

His fire roars within his chest, she feels the radiance

through his study walls. Surely his fingers touch

another world, with rocks and colors he can paint

in bitter air. Such uneasy trances, this transport

of eyes. His mouth mumbles over silent words.

Her own visions show fingers laid end to end,

their black nails smooth as agate or magnetite.

She grips his severed head by the coal black hair,

holds it as he whispers prophecies to the icy stars.

She sleeps in her volcanic bed, alone and unafraid

as shifting roof beams crack in thunderous blasts.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press).